Morten and I headed to Store Gryta to find some ice to skate on. Unfortunately it was a little thin, so we stopped for a short food break where I tried Julebrød med brun øst (Norwegian Christmas bread with brown cheese), a traditional Christmas time snack around these parts.
My new skating Morten kindly drove us to Setertjern for some ice skating. 50 mm of nice hard, smooth ice 🙂 There was a swiffle of snow on the top, but nothing major.
This is a lesson in why you should always pack hot water when travelling outdoors in Oslo 😉
This was a yummy bottle full of forest berry flavoured saft (Norwegian drink flavouring stuff, kinda like cordial) before leaving home; 60 minutes later and it became a saft slushy!
The photo was taken on Kringlevann.
After having a such a terrific time out ice skating the night before, I headed back to Sognsvann in the morning to try out the ice during the daylight. There was a little more snow and the surface had roughened up a little, but still an amazing days skating in the great outdoors. It is terrific being able to catch public transport from my home all the way to such an amazing chunk of ice.
After being hospitalised with a head injury this evening (I thought it would be fun to walk into a cupboard door), Morten and I decided to go for an evening skate on Sognsvann on the outskirts of the city. We were greeted with beautiful smooth ice interspersed with the occasional snow dump.
The local fire fighters had been doing some sort of training on the ice and had cut a big triangle out of the ice.
More photos from my recent skating trip to Kringlevann. We had terrific weather this day, -6° C and very little clouds. A great change from the past month of dreary rainy crap.
I took the following panorama on my phone whilst skating on Kringlevann, not far from outskirts of Oslo.
Morten and I headed to Langvann for some ice skating. Beautiful weather and a really long and smooth sheet of ice to skate on.
People keep asking me how cold Oslo is. A picture supposedly paints a thousand words, so here is a photo I took outside a bar this morning.
Presumably a patron left their beer sitting outside last night, and by this morning it was frozen solid.
After multiple trips over the past few weeks to Kringlevann all resulted in failed attempts at skating, I was beginning to think my chances of skating in the great outdoors this season was fading fast. Fortunately we had a good freeze over the past few days and only a minor dusting of snow. After I trudged up the hill to the lake, I was greeted with a solid 50 – 70 mm of rock hard smooth ice 🙂 The snow on top was all fluffy stuff which didn’t affect skating at all.
